In the area of software application development, software application developers expect to make changes to a deployed application and see the changes immediately, e.g. by refreshing the browser. Frameworks built using interpreted languages such as Ruby and Python enable such functionality. These languages allow entire applications to be refreshed without an explicit build or deploy cycle. Java, however, typically requires developers to edit, build, and deploy before finally testing their changes to the code. This development cycle can be time consuming. One way to reduce development time is to use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which combines the Edit and Build steps by providing auto-incremental compilation support.
FIG. 1 describes a typical development cycle developers must go through to see the results of changes to their applications. In step 100 the developer edits the application. In step 102 the developer builds the application after completing the changes the developer wished to make. Once the build cycle is complete, in step 104 the developer can then deploy or redeploy the application. In step 106, the application is ready to be tested. In an iterative development cycle, where these steps are repeated until a final version is created, development time can be significant.